In recent weeks and months we’ve seen many celebrities contacted from beyond the grave – including Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith, Kurt Cobain and Jade Goody. Or rather, we’ve seen psychics claiming to contact these people, as there’s never been anything to suggest for a moment that they were actually in contact with the dead.

Well we’ve a new name to add to the list – crocodile hunter and all-round Aussie legend Steve Irwin. Irwin died in 2007 after being struck by a stingray, and has been sorely missed since then, not least of course by his family. Which makes it all the more terrible that psychic Deb Webber is claiming to have made connection with the Steve whilst doing a reading for his father Bob.

“We talked about so many things, some too personal to talk about,” Mr Irwin said. “He told me everything is OK, not to be sad and to keep up the fight, to continue looking after the animals.”

Obviously Deb’s powers are pretty accurate there, because I remember Steve Irwin being on TV and he definitely seemed like the kind of person who’d advise you to look after animals, so her reading definitely sounds like him. Therefore it’s true. Yeah.

As for the things too personal to talk about, it’s hard to comment on these – obviously it’s heartbreaking for Bob Irwin to have lost his son, and in so tragic a way, and there’s nobody who doesn’t feel sad for him; but if indeed Deb Webber isn’t contacting Steve, and instead is just using basic cold reading mixed with platitudes taken not from her ability to speak to the dead, but her ability to make up stuff that Steve would have endorsed like ‘look after the animals’ just to get her some cheap publicity, surely that’s even more heartbreaking.

Still, the article does give one seemingly supposedly amazing insight she came up with:

Steve even wanted to know what his dad had done with all the old socks he’d taken.

This might seem incredibly insightful – maybe it actually is, it’s hard to tell. If we had a tape of the actual conversation, things would be a lot clearer. Personally, I think this sounds like a combination of a good chance guess and a misremembered reading. The good chance guess is something you see often with psychic readings, the textbook example involves seeing things like boxes of old photographs, pictures of animals on a hallway wall, forgotten loose change in a foreign currency – the type of things more of us have in our houses than you might expect. As for the misremembered reading, this hit might have simply sprung from something quite generic, like ‘Steve says you still have something of his, and he wants to know what you’ve done with them‘ (something quite loose and likely to hit), to which the sitter makes the connection to, in this case, socks. It’s easy to see how this ‘hit’ was generated, and it’s certainly garnered Debs a lot of publicity.

The article in the sun adds a little background, saying:

A friend recommended a session with an acclaimed psychic named Deb Webber. Bob, previously sceptical, described the whole experience as “powerful and moving”, and revealed how the woman clasped his hand in a “Steve handshake” during the session.

This demonstrates a couple of very common themes in these kind of readings – firstly the ‘friend’ who’s just trying to help the grieving, by inadvertently exposing them to charlatans. Secondly, the desperation of the bereaved to make some kind of connection to their lost loved ones – which is so often abused for money or publicity. Fortunately, the commenters on The Sun’s article picked up on this, with KeithTas summing it up beautifully:

It is all very sad when someone dies, but speaking from the grave, give me a break. This is typical psychic rubbish. If spirits were able to talk to the living does anyone really believe that with the wonderous things that believers want to know about the other side, all they want to talk about socks. These pyschic frauds should be locked up, if they are trully psychic then why don’t they contact James Randi, he has $1 million waiting for them. They can give this money to some needy cause like curing cancer or AIDs, surely this is much better than mucking around with socks.

Well said Keith.

Digging around for info on Deb Webber, I thought I’d take a quick look at her website… which was out of order. Well, all but the homepage was (ooh, she’s a metaphysical researcher! Sounds fancy…). Happily, in this day and age nothing is lost, and Google’s cache facility offered me this incoherent and semi-literate nonsense from her About page. I’ll quote part of it verbatim, to show you the level of character we’re dealing with, and the number of exit strategies she builds in to her own readings:

Knowing that there are a great number of energies around as you could imagine I may ask you to confirm if I have the right soul.

Most of the time I find that the energy you want to connect with is there and comes in, straight away.

At times the energy that we would like to arrive may not appear, maybe because we all evolve and their doing their thing what ever that is or maybe it is not time for you to have the experience or maybe I am not the one to do your reading or maybe you are a person that does not want to believe or ready to open up for change. It does happen (not often) for many reasons why I can’t get in. But thank you to the divine energies most times we will have the result we are looking for.

No matter what I will try my best for you to get their messages etc through.

I find that most of the time I will pick up who they are to you, but again some times not but you will know by the description given.

Please choose not to live with false hope, just in truth!

If I pick up things about future remember it is only a guidance and you can change things. We have no control, every thing that happens pretty much is God’s Will.

Yikes. It’s worth attempting to read through her site, via Google cache, for more of this semi-literate and transparent nonsense.

I also did another bit of digging on Deb Webber, this time not on her website, but on our friends at Bad Psychics website. I’ll quote Jon Donnis on this:

On August 13th, 2004 Australian Channel 7 broadcast a show called “Caught on Hidden Camera” but this wasn’t a Beadles About type show, instead it was an exposure of one of Australia’s best known Psychics. They set Deb Webber up, by letting her give readings to three people, psychologist Michelle Smith, Tahlia and Joshua.

Deb then continued to communicate with dead people, who simply never existed. First up is Psychologist Michelle Smith. Michelle is single, but creates a dead husband for Deb to speak to.

And Deb obliges, she even manages to speak to this imaginary dead husband on more than one occasion! Now that is an amazing skill, reminds me of a certain Derek Acorah!

Anyway Michelle later reveals.“I never had a husband. She saw two large dogs, a large house and property, I have none of those things.”

Deb Webber’s response to this is:“If they lie to me, well it’s like the spirits do it back to them,”

Good work Bad Psychics. It seems Deb used to present an Australian show called ‘Sensing Murder’, which attracted 1.5million viewers… until this very public TV exposure, at which point her show was promptly cancelled.

So, anyone still believe it was really Steve Irwin chatting about his socks?

This entry was posted on March 26, 2010, 10:00 and is filed under cold-reading, Psychics. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0.
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I’ve been thinking about attending a psychic night and doing something similar to the hidden camera trick myself. The main holding me back is that I don’t know if I could restrain myself from visiting violence on the piece of filth in front of me as I watch them fleece innocent, deluded people!

Being a Skeptic myself, I just love it when charlatans get exposed. Nice article.
Mathew: I’m afraid you have too high hopes for the The Sun. As I understand it; it was a commenter on the article and not the writer that made the amazing response.

Btw. Everybody knows that it was I – Le Clerc – that took Steves old socks and not his dad.

What surprises me that none of you have the first time experience with Deb Webber, and just trying to jump on the band wagon. I have contacted her for a reading, and there were some very very personal things between me and my wife which were mentioned to me (it was telephone reading), my house was decribed (she wouldn’t have guessed or known that whether i live in a house or flat)…the locations were described accurately where i was. So why dont some of you try for yourself and then reach any conclusions

Those fake psychics make it hard for us real psychics to be taken seriously and are putting a damper on our livelihood.
What? You don’t believe that there’s real psychics? Oh yeah? Then how did I know you didn’t? That’s right, because I’m psychic. And don’t be snickering to yourself about what an ass you think I am, because I can see that too!

I think there’s a logical explanation for lots of so called psychic stuff, however, I went into town with my friend years ago and I popped into the shop of a gent I knew. My friend started telling him all about himself and his relatives: I’ve never seen anything like it. She said his full name; his date of birth; where he was born; the names and birthrates of his parents and siblings; what his qualifications were and she also told him to go see a medical specialist for symptoms. She described what they were. She also described a scene, in detail, where he should pull off the road. She then apologized, and said she didn’t know what had come over her. My friend was amazed as it was all accurate. He went to the Dr and was immediately sent for blood tests and what she had told him was the probable diagnosis she had said, the Dr will think it could be one of two things, turned out he did say that. About six months later, my friend found himself on the road and h
realised the scene described by my girlfriend that day. He parked off the road and minutes later, a vehicle came hurtling through the intersection, where he would have been waiting for the lights to change to green. He said he didn’t stop shaking for a while. My girlfriend had no explanation for what happened, she just said she knew beyond a doubt, that she also felt impelled to tell my friend, whom she had never met, what she ‘knew’. since that tome, many years ago, my girlfriend has mentioned things in passing which have all come true: she told me my boy(who was 16 at the time, would work overseas by the water and there were metal towers in the water. She said he’d work with rocks. Years later I remembered that when my son, who became a Geologist and worked as am oil company executive, was working on Houston. He was 42 at that time. I can’t explain how she knew that stuff. Cold reading? Don’t insult my intelligence.

I personally know Deb, and her family. She is a beautiful soul who, despite her own life struggles, continues to help to the best of her ability complete strangers from various walks of life. Whether you believe in “psychics” or not, personally attacking someone despite never meeting them and judging them solely on how someone else has portrayed them
through the media is a complete juvenile act. And I ask you this, if you had a son or daughter, how would you feel if they were subjected to this type of slander about you? Deb is a wonderful, insightful human being and a loving mother who would never harm another human being with such pettiness as I see so often today.

Such a shame that people have to attack the unknown, if people believe and it gives them comfort why does it bother “skeptics” so much? if people are religious and follow god does that give athiests the right to attack those that believe? no……I’m a believer& refuse to be moved!!!

Maybe the skeptics are just fearful of what Deb might reveal about them! Do you crucify Catholics, just because you’re a buddhist? No, each to their own. Just like believers and non-believers. We’re all allowed our own opinions and thoughts, thought this was a freedom of choice country? So why try to ram your non-believing ways and change us believers views? Maybe for once you non-believers could try to be non-judgemental, and see how your life might change!

In my opinion, all this rubbishing psychics, especially Deb Webber and her values, has absolutely nothing to do with Deb or any other psychic. It is about the critics themselves, who so obviously have the issues with it! First of all, WHO is asking them to believe? No one is concerned as to whether they do or not! It appears to me, they are behaving in the same manner of which they so readily accuse others.

Says Monsieur Roger LeClerc –
“I’ve been thinking about attending a psychic night and doing something similar to the hidden camera trick myself. The main holding me back is that I don’t know if I could restrain myself from visiting violence on the piece of filth in front of me as I watch them fleece innocent, deluded people!”
Perhaps you should question yourself, as to why you would go along to deliberately berate another human being because YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T APPROVE, SO in my opinion, your only reason for actually attending is to FIND EXCUSES TO INFLICT PAIN!

I am proud to be a Lightworker. I very much believe in spiritual energy and I would like to send positive energies, love and compassion to those who feel they need to use THEIR energy running down another fellow human. Why not create a happy energy within yourself by directing positive thoughts to those who make good use if their time on this earth helping others? You might enjoy the feeling it gives, knowing helping is better than mocking.

I have been reading this page and feel very disturbed by some of the comments, I am a Tarot Reader and clairvoyant myself and I to help a lot of people, people like myself do not and should not try to force our beliefs onto others, however, if somebody was to call for a reading, we are there to help that person, what Deb Webber is doing is a wonderful thing and what a wonderful gift that lady has bless her and as for what the non believers think , this is usually due to people being afraid of the unknown or of the afterlife itself, so what I am trying to get across to who ever is reading this piece that I have typed is, that we are all entitled to our own opinions, but there is often a way to express this without being upsetting to others, I would like to wish Deb Webber all of the beauty and luck in the world and bless her heart for she is of pure spirit, Blessings Karla, England.x

I feel sorry for the skeptics for so many reasons. Their name says it all: they are by definition the opposite of open-minded. They think they are scientific, but in fact they never disprove anything (at best they may on rare occasion expose a fraud). They have a pre-ordained agenda to disbelieve, which makes them immediately biased. For their information, climate change is real too, and oh yeah the Earth is round. Keep meeting in pubs guys, that’s the best place for your level of intellect.

All I can say is don’t knock it till you have tried it. I saw Deb in a group setting on Friday night, and I am still amazed. I was a wee bit unsure as to whether to believe or not, but now I am sure she has genuine connections, you could actually feel different types of energies in the room, something I would never even have thought about until being there. just amazing.

What we think of as psychics with an ability to contact the dead are not quite that. They are individuals wih a certain sensitivity and presence of mind which can, and does ‘tune into’ varying dimensional reflections which are unavailable to less sensitive people. Unfotunatly less sensitive people who, because they don’t have or understand this particular presence of mind feel more comfortable if they attempt to ridicule it – which is their prerogative and fair enough. The Budda said “if it’s true for you then it’s true” wise words !

I have had the pleasure of meeting Deb Webber twice and the things she told me were spot on and there’s no way she could have known these things so I think you skeptics will never believe no matter what you hear or see and just like bagging Deb and other psychic mediums out because you don’t understand or your scared.

i am surprised how people are so prepared to slag off after life. And if there is after life, then it is possible to get connected. we created God out of necessity to accommodate our wish, unfortunate that we did not try to follow and believe in the one who created all this. Sceptics are weak, they have no faith, and that is why it is important for them to criticise, object to anything that they cannot comprehend, and takes them out of their comfort zone. I have come across fake Mediums (after loosing my wife to cancer), a lot of them, but Deb Webber is NOT one of them. Trust me, I am 100% sure about that, and Rick Colingwood is also NOT fake.

I once was a little bit skeptical until my own personal experiences were extremely hard to explain – I predicted the death and timeframes of death of people I cared about – I was forewarned to leave a country 3 days early and missed a life altering car accident that my 5 colleagues were in – I predicted cancer and illnesses – rapes in other colleagues – I was shown where a missing body was buried in the National park – I dreamt repeatedly for 5 months of a child abduction that had taken place – I even randomly called into an old acquaintances house to tell her dying mother the names of deceased whom were waiting for her (I have never met or known any of these people) – you could not make this up if you tried and it is coming purely from caring and kindness (no other angle) please explain this to me because it has been life changing to my family and me – did I think I was possibly losing my marbles (of course I did) but these circumstances were to accurate to dismiss……

I spent 10 days with Deb webber at her house. She welcomed10 strangers into her home on a retreat. She has nothing to hide and nothing to prove. She is a gift.You are wasting your energy and others on creating pages like this

I was once an ardent skeptic of psychic phenomena until the day I restrung my guitar, and I predicted that a string would snap when I wound it and hit me in the face. Sure enough a string snapped and whipped me in the face! Then I predicted I wouldn’t have enough money to buy another guitar string, and sure enough I didn’t! Wow I thought, I’m really getting into the psychic groove now! My next prediction is that the sun will rise in the morning and somebody will flush their turds down the toilet.